[sdiy] Modding the MKS-3(7?)0 - Looking for suggestions

[Bob Weigel]

Certainly all kinds of mod possibilities exist.  The 'oscillators' are 
processor pulsed op amp circuits as I recall.  Creating jitter in pulse 
widths would be one way to make it sound more like a minimoog as some 
people determined a while back was part of the trademark sound.   I've 
thought of some circuits that would create a controllable amount of 
jitter.  But that's a timbral fatness.  If you are talking about less 
stable oscillators, then you are into a difficult thing because it's all 
crystal controlled ultimately.  Slow changes aren't going to be easy to 
accomplish at all. -bob

. wrote:

>On Saturday 23 June 2007 21:45, dj hohum wrote:
>  
>
>>Recently I've been thinking about modifying the analog paths of some
>>of my polysynths. In particular, I'd like to do something with the
>>JX-10 as I've had this love hate relationship with it for as long as
>>I've had it.
>>    
>>
>Sorry for the late answer to this thread as i have 2200 unread messages in my 
>SDIY folder ;) 
>
>I have a MKS70 and theses days i have been wondering how to make it sound 
>more "vintage". I bought it for less than 100USD with a broken solder that 
>took me 5mn to fix and i was quite disapointed by the DCO, specially because 
>it has so great reviews on harmony-central. Well, nothing juicy, compared to 
>a VCO the sound is quite rough and it asks for a lot of processing (tube 
>preamp) to make it sounds well. Overall it is certainly a fine synth despite 
>some limitations (1LFO !!) and probably a good candidat for modding.
>
>What i was silently wishing:
>-some sort of "boost" circuit post filter (X12 !) to make it sound 
>fatter/older. There are several simple circuits from the guitar world from 
>soft boost to overdrive, need investigations. Some noise will certainly jump 
>in the game, so the best thing is to do that before the VCA stage (not sure 
>if the Roland chip would allow it).
>
>-on the DCO, is there a possibility to make the DCO less stable !? :)) lol, i 
>am not yet very aware of the circuitry around the triple counter chips used 
>in the MKS70, but i had crazy ideas like making the central clock jittery. I 
>am afraid it wont work so i hope the boost circuit will already bring enough 
>fatness..
>
>-A sub-osc on the DCOs. At least this mod should be fairly do-able. Even 1 
>subosc would allow massive sound weaponery on that synth.  
>
>-Some waveshapper (prefilter)
>
>-a 12db mode on the filter, i really like 12db filters, i remember on my (now 
>sold, regrets) DSS1 Korg, how it was nice to have this mode to make 
>beautifull pads..  Others modes like 6 or 18db may be interesting. 
>Audio modulation of the cutoff, like someone mentioned, would be nice too.
>
>Amongst the other ideas, adding a third delay line on the choruses, ala 
>Solina, but it seems that the new J.Haible Chorus project is going to foster 
>that need (at least i hope). 
>
>Some of theses mods may requires an external way to recall the parameters. 
>After all what matter is not on board patch storage but control from a 
>computer or a MIDI box. I would go for a serial or parallel port solution as 
>its easy to handle from software like Puredata.
>
>NR 
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